


Everything Then Nothing

by Soulkit



Category: Borderlands
Genre: M/M, Stream of Consciousness, implied Rhack, very mildly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 16:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5133764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulkit/pseuds/Soulkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One moment there, the next, not. He does not want to die, but it never occurs to him to admit it was his own failure that led to this moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Then Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Grammar - or lack thereof - is deliberate.

There isn’t a sensation when the port is ripped out. There’s a flicker of the world around him, like a computer monitor shifting and spinning from the stress of a virus, a moment of disassociation leaving him as unbalanced as is possible for an AI to feel, but other than that, nothing. His body is no longer what he once knew, blood and muscle and tissue strung together, letting him _strangle_ and _shoot_ and _do what needs to be done_ (because _he_ is the _goddamn hero_ ), but it doesn’t change how fast he spins around. The face opposite him swims in and out of focus and the blue of the ECHO eye is edged with black when the first shocked words leave his mouth and drift into the air.

He might never admit it, but he knows the weight of failure, is intimately aware of how it presses down on him. Once upon a time he might have said he could taste it, but now there is nothing but his own storming thoughts. A star flickers in the sky and winks out of existence.

Rhys is pale and solid and real in front of him, eyes filled with pain and grim determination, blood still trickling down the wires leading into nothing where an arm used to be, glass poised and ready in a hand that trembles only the barest amount, and he breathes in nothing to replace everything.

Jack almost wishes _Nakayama_ never existed. He does not remember dying, but he remembers emptiness and knows it’s somewhere he can never go back. His eyes whisper Rhys and his lips form the name in between flickers of reality and it fills his mind and reverberates and echoes back and forth but he does not want to see _Rhys_ in front of him, implacable and immoveable. He used to be a very good liar; that skill is long gone now, somewhere far away with the rest of his life, carried by the static in the air for some other boy to scoop up.

( _Rhys will be much better at putting it to use._ )

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

It’s impossible not to laugh when the kid tells him – _“I-it’s… like I told you: Handsome Jack… is dead.”_ – that he was killed after opening his vault by those stupid bandits, diminutive next to the solid frame of his Warrior. He knows the name Nakayama, every Hyperion employee knows the name, but it is hard to reconcile this new existence, this new yet utterly familiar _him_ , with the madman who had Claptraps paint love notes on his wall.

Not even this _boy_ in front of him, although Hyperion in looks and sound, is anything he would expect. Then, he looks, actually _looks_ , and realises that there has been something different about Rhys from the very beginning ( _“Tattoos are not normal, you know that, how can that be someone dedicated and true?”_ ). He thinks it doesn’t matter either way, because it is still the body he is bound to and he is nothing if not curious and it isn’t like he has anybody else to talk to anyway.

He reappears with a smile and a promise and once, just once, everything is where it should be, where it must be ( _whispers at the door, little boy, they’re coming to get you, don’t be afraid_ ) – the whispering of his betrayers, those people he knew without knowing, is very quiet now.

_“Look, if you go, I go. You can figure out how to pay me back later.”_

The words are born out of selfish arrogance, an entitlement he is owed stating effort on his part must be redeemed. Considering the outcome of his _partnerships_ so far, he only believes it while he’s speaking, and it all changes when he sees the set in Rhys’ jaw and the white of clenched knuckles when it sets in for the kid that he is surviving for two now.

_“I’ll get you back, Jack. Trust me.”_

And where has he heard _those_ words before?

( _Even later, he conveniently forgets that, despite everything, he has never not trusted Rhys._ )

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

“But through me… his legacy carries on,” ( _then you better watch out for the knife in your back_ ) and Jack stops listening there and his fists clench and he wants to punch this idiot in the face because there is no legacy, he is not _nothing_ , he is not an idea that needs to be carried forward into death and blood and all those things little boys and girls keep in the corners of their nightmares until better days come. It feels like filth on his transparent body, the insidious whispers in little boys’ heads about fame and glory and becoming something they will never have an _iota_ of a chance at being just because they think he’s gone. It makes him sick.

_You are nothing, you will never be anything, just like your pathetic mother._

_He_ is Handsome Jack. _He_ is the hero. Nobody will ever live up to him.

At least Rhys knows how to think for himself, he decides, watches the sideways glance and arched eyebrow sent towards him but it disappears before he is ever sure of what he sees, carried away by the fist slammed into Rhys’ body sending the kid stumbling back and collapsing to the ground. There’s a jolt and a flicker of emptiness and he is halfway through the motions to squeeze the life out of Vasquez’s pasty neck when his brain re-wires itself and for the first time he sees his futility. Funny how the ground weaves back and forth so; he always thought it was solid.

(And now it’s in his head and won’t be denied, no matter how much he thinks, tries desperately not to think, that he is no longer what he remembers. He is ashes and dust, a scary story to be told in the dark to an entire world of people he was once revered and feared by in equal measure, a ghost haunting a boy with eyes too bright and pockets filled with empty ambition.)

_As if you could ever live up to Jack._

He realigns and stares at the defiant eyes staring back up at him, daring him to reply _neither will you_ , and wonders when the world reversed and his baby-eyed meat bag ( _who is not so much weaker than him as he is a fighter trapped in the lies he was brought up believing – and Jack does not want to think on the mechanics of that, because it is a little too close to home though it makes his much-abused ego feel that much better_ ) began to look out for him. His body pulses with confused anger that can only sit in his stomach and grow cold and in his head _Rhys_ echoes back and forth until he’s leaning in close to the source of the fury and forcing his mind to remember because there is nothing else he can do.

Jack does not look over at Rhys’ now confused expression, squinting his eyesight into the shape of Vasquez because Rhys and cute do not belong anywhere near each other. (He blames Nakayama for creating this and his family for half-killing him and breaking a tiny part of his brain and the vault hunters for starting a war in the first place, instead, because those things are as intangible as he is now and they take the blame silently.)

His brain breaks all over again when Rhys’ face twists into savage glee rivalling his own as the memory _Wallethead_ makes itself known and he thinks ‘yes, this kid gets it,’ so he points and laughs and ignores the spark sent through him as Rhys is forced by gunpoint to walk into his body. His human vehicle is supposed to be soft and pliable and kind, not all sharp hard edges and smirk.

Then again, soft and pliable and kind are always the first to break and die.

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

He stands with a morbid fascination as the platform moves under the kid’s direction, _feels_ the rush of adrenaline that accompanies the power over life and death even though his digital body has no such thing. By now, the people in the main room have realised something is happening; Rhys’ eye shines blue and Jack thinks, but isn’t sure, he sees the curl of a grin ( _this is where they belong, in power and in tandem, making the dirty bandits run_ ) as the sentries are directed to fire upon glass ( _this is their moment, you better fucking runrunrun_ ).

Jack swaps control back to him and strides into the room and pretends he does not hear Rhys’ heart beating in his ears as the kid and the hat chick scurry round him and he knows he doesn’t have to be tangible to be noticed now ( _Get ready to lick my boots, you raging douchebags!_ ). The room is thrown into glowing blue light, paling the face of every person even more than the hail of bullets do as they dodge death speeding towards them and shout nonsensical words. Screams and chaos, right where he belongs, and for the first time since he woke up he truly feels _alive_. He doesn’t have to move, he only has to think and the machines do his bidding and he’s free to laugh and yell and insult and it doesn’t even matter that his voice is nothing but a void only Rhys can hear because he knows his bullets are doing all the talking for him.

( _There is no legacy_ , _I am_ here, _I am_ alive.)

He sees, faintly through his ecstasy, his meat bag and co. crouching behind the Greek god ( _and what is a god to a non-believer?_ ) and decides to reward the kid with something to help him out. It’s a dumpy little thing that makes him snigger just looking at it but there’s more to it than what meets the eye, so it suits Rhys perfectly. And hell, the kid does a pretty good job at showing its effectiveness.

When he turns back to the group next, catches them in his line of vision more like because he’s having way too much fun to actually pay attention to anything other than the amount of blood on the floor, it sends him doubled over with laughter as he watches the fricking loader bot feel up Atlas’ ass. He points and lets his joy echo outwards ( _this is proof, he does not need to be flesh and bone to be who he once was, he is not nothing_ ) and only sobers when through the mirth he hears the words “Rhys” and “get out” and he twists round towards the bloodshed once more. _Rhys_.

_Rhys, what are you doing? Get out of there!_

Jack finds his meat-buddy with red hands, kneeling next to the prone figure he recognises as Vasquez, the man Rhys turned upon with machines and fury and blew off an arm with snarling satisfaction. Hard to believe the trembling, bleeding mess on the floor was the one who started all of this ( _but that was before when the rules of Hyperion were the most dangerous thing Rhys knew and everything is different now, isn’t it?_ ). Jack swallows his _relief_ – pushes it to a barren part of his mind – and opens his mouth to call out to Rhys but the name dies in his throat when he sees the statue waver and the stone crack and all he can think of is _Rhys_ and _danger_ and he’s running before he even considers his intangibility ( _but he knows he is only so fast against time_ ).

_Thump-thump-thump-thumpthumpthump—_

He opens his eyes when the sound of rock breaking on metal fades, no resonance of stone crushing limbs anywhere to be heard. He sees mismatched eyes set in a pale face, staring open-mouthed at the opening Atlas’ stone world created and someone says something about being an _asshole_ , but it filters through Jack’s brain, shoved into the same place as his relief for later. He grins instead and gives a sarcastic two-fingered salute as Rhys is dragged away from him by the loader bot and for a few moments, he pretends everything is alright as he flickers back into Rhys, leaving behind the dead bodies, the blood in the air and the muffled screaming.

( _We did this. Not you. Not I._ )

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

Someone is crying. Dead bodies burn a hole in the ground and there is a bandit with _nothing_ in place of a lung and entrails spilling out over bloody hands to pool messily on the ground and lies very still. _Vaughn_ is still missing. Rhys does not know where he is anymore.

Jack thinks there is something very unfair about life ( _he had it back, muscle and bone and life and all it took was a goddamn punch to the face and it was gone, and now it’s running and blood and fire but he can do nothing but watch. Again_ ).

Rhys runs, cutting through foliage, swiping at the voices echoing in the air, and jumps over the dead without a passing glance or thought even for those lying with the names of families-friends-lovers on their still breathing lips. _No time_. He runs.

_Are you scared, Rhys? Are you scared to die? To fail? To be forgotten?_

( _Nothing, never anything, just like your mother_.)

The forest screams.

 _We’re not going to die. I won’t. I refuse_.

Rhys stops, bent double in exhaustion, and Jack flickers into existence without making himself known and realises he no longer knows how long they’ve been together ( _the minutes blur together and an hour becomes a week becomes a day_ ). The kid’s face is haggard and there are dark smudges under his eyes, but he is alive and fighting and Jack fancies he can see the beating of his heart somewhere behind those mismatched eyes, the steady _thump-thump_ that will keep him alive if everything else fails.

( _They are one and the same, beating in tandem against the red morning sky_.)

Gortys and her pursuers are far away now, hidden somewhere in the maze of purposefully grown trees ( _Rhys coughs and bends over further and Jack wonders if the stench of ripped flesh and decay is familiar to him_ ). Once more the day is saved by the loader bot and once more Rhys is dragged away from him and he smiles a very thin smile. Jack thinks that if they ever make their way back to Helios, it won’t only be his story to tell.

Duck. Run. Swing. Attack. Run. There seems to be a certain finality to their actions now. ( _Vallory says they are going to die. Jack thinks that is not possible – but when has that ever made a difference?_ ) Adrenaline runs through Rhys’ veins – but there is little else – and he is very tired.

_Hey, LB, Sasha. (Breathe.) Make sure you take my ECHO eye, yeah?_

(Jack doesn’t need to breathe, but he’s sure his lungs stop for a few seconds.)

Run. Run. Run. Stun baton in the face. Kick to the groin for good measure. _Gortys, watch out!_ Rinse and repeat.

Jack can’t help but admire Gortys’ upgrade when he sees it. For something made by _Atlas_ , the robot is pretty cool. But when the world slows down and the kid is tied up and shoved in front of everything he’s trying to fight against, Jack only has eyes for him because even though dried blood crusts in his hair and his shirt is stained with more, even though Jack is nothing but an AI once more with just a brief memory of the feel of another’s skin, Rhys is _alive_ and none of that matters anymore ( _or so Jack pretends; there have been so many brushes with death and he knows vault hunting is never easy but he is starting to realise his life is not so much his own as it is borrowed now_ ).

_“It’s up there… on Helios.”_

Neither of them can believe it. Much later, after someone has been stabbed and there’s apparently going to be a rocket caravan, something to do with Vasquez’s face, Jack’s existence kept quiet, _for now_ , and a plan in place ( _but all plans go awry, as life decrees_ ) and everyone is asleep, Jack flickers on to examine the kid’s port again. He’s still learning but he’s pretty sure if it came to it the bionic arm would do whatever he says. What has _really_ got him curious is how close that port is to the motor function of the brain and he needs time to poke and examine ( _he has been betrayed too many times and there has to be a contingency plan no matter how much it makes his chest tighten with guilt_ ).

He stumbles and freezes just as he’s leaning in because it is _Rhys,_ wide awake and _grinning_ and everything he has ever thought about his baby-eyed meat bag is being ripped apart and twisted and taped back together.

 _Come on, Jack. I thought you’d do better than that_.

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

He grins and pushes Rhys to sit in the imposing yellow chair behind the desk of the  _real_ Hyperion CEO and wishes he could sling an arm over his shoulder or at least _touch_ him somehow ( _and he is snatching at ephemeral wisps that seep through his fingers, trying to catch all these little moments to itemize and collect and keep stored away somewhere safe and peaceful_ ). There are a few odds and ends still to be tied up and his _AI_ needs to be plugged in before the fun really starts (although he will miss Rhys, the way he can slip through the kid’s head and weave a web and lay it down and turn a body into a puppet just like that, but he can’t hide in there forever and doesn’t want to – _he’s always been a very good liar, especially to himself_ ) but it is quiet here, no-one watching from the corner ( _to gossip and stare and scurry away with stolen secrets to throw from the rooftops_ ), and the air is that much lighter when no-one can tell him “this is what you left behind, this is when you died, this is how you live on.” The water swirls and eddies lazily and he thinks if he could still claw his way to that tiny ledge of Hyperion employees who die of old age and only old age, this is where he would like to die.

The office belongs to him, this place is his, only his, and he will only allow Rhys in the sanctity of it.

_Closeyoureyesandsleep._

The mist of memories this office holds clings to him. Part of him wants to run, doesn’t want to fill the blanks in his memory, but this is everything he has been working towards and he sticks his feet to the ground and watches Rhys sink into the chair ( _this must happen, trust no-one_ ). Jack feels as though he is swimming, lost and floundering somewhere underwater and ignores the voice telling him the kid can pull him out.

He has to make sure he plays this right, smile and make it real, not just large and toothy, because for this to work he can’t seem too eager but also not _uncaring_. It’s making his head hurt thinking about it all, but once he’s plugged in that won’t matter. ( _Five-_ )

Rhys’ eyes burn when he gives his hypothetical answer ( _I’d get my revenge_ ) and Jack feels a swell of pride he instantly moves to squash. He remembers the hurt in Rhys’ face when Yvette was zapped by Dumpy and drags upon anger instead, the unfairness at it all that no matter what people can never be trusted, before- ( _-four-_ )

-a mishmash of more emotions cycle through Rhys’ face as the offer is proposed. His hands rub the edges of the yellow seats and he takes a moment to not meet Jack’s eyes, like a time a thousand years ago in the Atlas facility where the kid genuinely did not know what to do. But Jack fancies he knows Rhys enough now, knows what decision will be made for equally selfish and unselfish reasons. ( _-three-_ )

Nevertheless, the ground seems to weave back and forth when the kid grins and nods and promises fly back and forth in the air ( _I told you I’d get you here, didn’t I?_ ) and Jack can hardly believe they survived to this point, but- ( _-two-_ )

-nothing can throw either of them off now. Even when the hat chick chimes in, Rhys takes it in his stride and the override port into his head. Jack thinks of Nakayama and vault hunters and dying before his time and lets the self-satisfaction dictate his actions ( _this is where we are meant to be_ ). He needs no prodigy, no legacy, he is _here_ and he will never let anyone forget it again. ( _-one._ )

_Hey… guess you’re taking over a bit earlier than we thought, Rhysie._

Jack remembers mismatched eyes set in a warm, eager face and the glow of blue light when his body flickers out of Rhys, thrown into a wealth of intangible _noise_ instead as the bloody muck of everything that is Helios sucks him in and he fights it with a laugh of delight. It strikes him as he reappears on screen that Rhys has never looked so small before.

( _If both of them feel a distinct sense of loss after the fact, neither comments on it; Jack’s transfer from body to space station will be little more than a footnote in amongst the stories of death and destruction that follows._

 _He wonders, suddenly, if he would have survived if his AI had not been inserted into Rhys. Jack cannot help the tiny thrill of dread that runs through him when contemplates what he has to now, what he always has to do_.)

_Do you think this is how it will end?_

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

Jack does not remember when his meat bag dissolved in the chair of his office and a stranger, wearing the mask of a familiar face peeled from white bone, took his place. The face remains the same, the eyes remain the same; the _entirety_ of the body is the same but the person is a stranger, someone so distant he can barely bring himself to say “Rhys” anymore.

He sees it best when they are alone, when the rest of Helios is reeling from the announcement and the thought of a vault is little more than a dull hum in the background of their minds. The funny thing about employees – _Hyperion_ employees – is that they are painfully opaque and transparent ( _there is nothing he does not know about Rhys and nothing Rhys does not know about him, born from the same mould_ ). The frightening thing about this new Rhys is he’s not sure what Rhys is anymore ( _there is something very cold and cruel buried in the kid and he already dreads the day when it burrows out and consumes him whole_ ).

_You don’t have to do this._

He wants to deny it. Tries to deny it. Tries so hard to deny it that while he’s flicking his way through familiar and unfamiliar halls, he is no longer _Jack_ but a pale imitation of the Rhys he no longer knows trying to carve through a mountain with bare fingers until it _hurts_ , because he cannot see _why_. He does not want to believe it. He refuses ( _it cannot be possible, will not be possible, because Rhys is Rhys, perfect for all his flaws and no more an unknown than his own reflection in the millions of screens he now occupies_ ) to believe it until he finds Rhys once more and sees nothing in equally mismatched-eyes but vague recognition and fury, nothing left of the faint warmth and familiarity that was theirs ( _and not for the first time something flits through Jack’s mind, a thought that stays but is never allowed to stick, that maybe he should have tried harder to understand because there is nothing of the baby-eyed meat bag in the man who stands before him now_ ).

_You’re next, Jack._

Helios panics. He sits in his virtual throne and watches the data explode, swollen with noise. Once more he can only sit and watch others do his work for him, but they are machines and while they do what he says, they are not smirks and weird socks and soft hair. There is a space station somewhere behind him, the _H_ locked behind tall walls forever searching for a flame to fan; there is a planet somewhere off to the side, earth dragged beneath eridium and torn by metal as plants wither and die.

Somewhere between the screams and desperate searching whimsy strikes and he laughs and burns through most of his remaining energy until his head _aches_ and _burns_ and the world is a dim narrow place, the drumbeat of warning signals echoing dimly in the metal halls as they collapse and batter his body. He stumbles somewhere and falls to his knees and sinks into darkness before he drags up enough energy to balance and his eyes flicker between on and off and the stop-go of the information running through his brain ( _daughter dead, daughter betrayer, daughter_ killed herself) as it speeds up and slows down threatens to drag out hysteria.

There is a space station somewhere before him, the yellow-and-red-and-white company a curse that burns and burrows deep into them. He can feel it on his chest, the _Hyperion_ logo neatly immortalised on his AI body, like a part of his non-existent skin ( _this is who we are, who I am, who you are meant to be; you are us and we are you and there is nothing we cannot do_ ). He stares down at his fractured reflection in the roiling glass and sees them in his eyes, his family incorporeal at his back and the rest of the people he _trusted_ before somewhere behind; they blur together in fire and coalesce until there is another pair of eyes somewhere above his shoulder and a voice pulling him up, inside the dubious cover of the walls.

_It’s over._

Rhys is a solid presence before him, the warning lights and his own blue shine casting an odd glow about him, and Jack fancies he can see bits and pieces of _his_ Rhys – _their_ Rhys – in the way even now the lines of tension at the corner of his eyes relax, in the hand that raises as if to touch the screen in front of him. He tugs it back instead and Jack goes to reply with something trivial ( _“and here I thought you didn’t care, kiddo,”_ ) but the words die somewhere in his throat when he sees where they are, the row of escape pods unmissable, the yellow of the loader bot more obvious than ever next to Rhys.

_“You really think you’ll make it out of here alive?”_

There is a planet somewhere behind him, grasping roots that make their implacable way through the ground beneath him and the cracked earth. He sees spiralling purple light carved into the air and thinks of the swirls and eddies of the water in his office, distorting his reflection and cracking his _mask_ and the _Hyperion_ symbol, a thousand little fragments in each ripple of water. He thinks of the purple light being ripped away, sucked into the darkness, removing its influence over the one good thing he ever had in his life.

“ _This was your choice, Jack. However... however long you have left, remember that. This is_ your _fault._ ”

Jack watches Rhys run and pretends, for a moment, that they are back on Pandora and this is only another minor disagreement ( _they will both be back tomorrow and the ground between them will crack and bury their regrets_ ) – but they are so much more than that now and he is born of a line of traitors and his Rhys is gone, shoved away by poisonous thoughts and kept at distance by his own ambition.

When the kid fails, he greets Rhys with a smile and a laugh and a promise that they are going down together; if his words are sharper and his eyes are wilder than ever, neither of them comment ( _they have always been good at keeping secrets, those special moments that belong to them and them alone._ ) His smile is the same – will always be the same, he has seen it so many times reflected in mismatched eyes – and he bites his tongue and tries to squash the rising guilt that twists his stomach and threatens to choke him when Rhys – _Rhys_ , always tall and awkward and able to survive no matter what is thrown at him – gives him a vicious smirk in response. He forces out a yell and his tongue seems swollen, unnaturally thick as he tries to form the words. Jack watches Rhys leave, a hundred versions of himself all at the same time as for a final time Loader Bot saves the day, and listens to the whispers of those who are now as dead as he, the voices who tell him it is for the best, because _he_ is the goddamn hero and they are being strangled, choked by the twisted gnarled wires of a company grown too large and proud.

Everybody thinks they are the hero of their own story. It has dawned too late that this time this is not his story to tell.

_They are all traitors in the end._

The mark of Hyperion has never been more of a brand on his chest, a symbol heavier than the station crashing towards Pandora that burns into his being as everything else burns around him.

०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०

The last of his dignity escapes as he falls to his knees and looks up toward a face so pale and cold that wavers before his eyes, still bloody red as wires dangle from the eye socket, prepared to quickly, inexorably, kill him.

(“ _Please don’t send me back there._ ”)

No last great battle, no song or dance, nothing that truly _matters_. One moment he will be there, the next, not. It is sudden, meaningless, pointless. It is the whole universe turning its back and walking away. Jack thinks, dimly, that he should have known Rhys was bound for fame beyond the confines of this life, chained to a space-bound company with wings grafted from empty bodies and blood ( _no happily-ever-after for cursed killers, one hand killing the weak and the other clinging to the ladder_ ), should have held on tighter and maybe found something new, something worth trusting after a life-time of betrayal.

Maybe he wouldn’t have failed so completely to see the one man who could save him from what he has always been truly afraid of.

( _“There’s nothing… there’s absolutely nothing there… Don’t do this."_ )

The stars wheel overhead and the moon is bright behind Rhys’ head and he thinks he sees, faintly, with his flickering eyesight (and where are the gifts of an AI now, the vaunted immortality or the power over machines or the systematic mind granting such a good memory?) the familiar shape of tears welling up in that solid brown eye as the blue morphs into something that spins and blurs. His throat closes, allowing nothing more than a final wordless cry, and he wonders if Rhys will even remember his name, his face, as anything other than the face and name of a madman.

There isn’t a sensation as the eye is ripped out.

One moment Jack is there, the next, Jack is not.

( _Please Rhys…_

 _…please don’t leave me here alone._ )


End file.
